Periods, Consumerism, and My Gentle Menstrual Activism

Today Nursing Clio welcomes a guest post from Jenna Tucker, a graduate student in English at the University of Oregon. She studied Creative Writing at Emerson College in Boston and maintains a personal blog under a pseudonym on the complexities of practicing an ethic of consent in everyday life.

The Camp Gyno ad sparked debate this past fall in the feminist blogosphere about menstruation and feminine care products. When I watched the ad, it managed to evoke just about every contradictory emotion I could feel in relation to periods, gender, and feminism. I felt everything from shame to ’90s girl-power pride to anti-capitalist rage. I’m a tiny arena in which contradictory personal and cultural history plays itself out.

The Camp Gyno ad has been praised by some feminists for being period positive. Others have seen Hello Flo’s discreet packaging as hiding menstruation and perpetuating young women’s period shame, which I would actually call period horror. The extreme taboo and shame around menstruation arise from a culture that devalues women. Watching the ad, I was reminded of Gloria Steinem’s marvelous piece of 1970s humor, “If Men Could Menstruate,” in which she imagines how periods would be represented in our culture if men had them instead of women. So the ad did make me smile. Part of me knows that this ad would not exist were it not for a great deal of effort on the part of feminist activists. I see that the ad is both better than the norm in feminine care product marketing and still not that much better, but my focus settles more on what I feel to be the weightier feminist issue of first-world consumerism and its harm to global health.

It is important to discuss the ad on the level of representation, but it also warrants a discussion on the underlying level of production. Consumerism tends to offer an escape from intimacy with the body, including bodies marked and shamed by gender, as part of the package deal. And not just our personal bodies as consumers but the collective body, as well. The effects of consumerism and environmental degradation are unequally distributed, globally and locally. Economic equality has always been central to feminist movements. If solidarity is to be maintained across lines of race and class, then these are undeniably feminist issues.

There is a rising awareness that companies “greenwash” product lines, adapting their marketing to sell the idea that they are earth-friendly without authentically alleviating the environmental cost of their product production. Part of what our system of production sells is the privilege of ignorance about realities of production, usually exploited labor and externalized cost. Greenwashing is a response to rising collective consciousness and unease about our economic system, a response that placates us and prevents the build up that would demand major change.

Likewise, advertisements seek to capitalize on feminist consciousness. I would use the term “fem-washing” for ads that take a tiny step towards progress without addressing real, deep feminist issues. They try to be generally positive towards women to sell their products. I compared the Camp Gyno ad with my favorite piece of feminist media of all time: Sarah Haskins’ brilliant series of “Target Women” videos on Infomania. Haskins satirizes advertizing campaigns that target women as their demographic. I especially love the moment in “Target Women: Birth Control” when Haskins lists off the things women like to do when not controlled by their periods, because she goes beyond the blatant sexism of these ads and reveals their shallow and gimmicky images of liberated women, as well.

As an alternative to mainstream consumer fem-care products, feminist activists have long advocated the use of products like sea sponges and menstrual cups. In the mid-1970, Second Wave menstruation activists promoted the use of alternative products along with familiarization with and celebration of women’s bodies. When, in the 1980s, a line of tampons marketed by Proctor and Gamble resulted in the toxic shock syndrome epidemic, the movement grew stronger.[1] Under government pressure, Proctor and Gamble withdrew their product, and the company later rebounded and became the makers of Tampax®.[2] I grew up with warnings for TSS on the boxes of tampons I purchased. Meanwhile, I was told that TSS “was a myth.”

Instead cup

Third Wave feminists and others who promote environmental awareness have continued the trend of informing and advocating for alternative, less costly products. I found ready support online some years ago when I bought sea sponges and a Divacup®, planning to wait until a “high self-confidence day” to try and transition to one or the other. It ended up being the Divacup®. After, I had a patch of intense anger that I had ever been taught to use disposable products in the first place. Nothing about them was better. Switching made a huge difference in my relationship to my period. My period caused me less anxiety, less discomfort, and less money. I was more self-reliant and had more positive awareness of my body. I’d been taught a way of managing my period that was in no way best for me, but instead best for companies who wanted to profit off me as much as possible.

We face a contradiction when our bodies are already politicized, policed, and controlled by mainstream society, to then also face pressure to make our bodies counter-culturally political. We can wind up wanting to assert ourselves, once again, to these demands. I’ve seen friends weep with shame because they were not “strong enough” feminists to maintain sexual boundaries.

So I’m a stealth, gentle menstruation activist. I’m trying to find that balance between becoming more critical and demanding of my society and becoming less critical and demanding of other women. On a societal scale, I try to fight normalization, oppression, rape culture, and coercion. On a personal scale, I try to give love and support and generate options. I regularly put the existence of menstrual cups and cloth pads made by real people (often moms) and available for purchase on Etsy onto the radar of my friends. I tell them my story. Once they show an interest, I support their transition. I guess I get to be a period Santa like in the Camp Gyno ad. Except I don’t have to come back every year or be paid once a month.

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1 Chris Bobel, “From Convenience to Hazard: A Short History of the Emergence of the Menstrual Activism Movement, 1972-1992,” Health Care for Women International 29 (2008): 738-754.

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6 Comments

Great post, Jenna! You might be interested in She: Sustainable Health Enterprises. http://www.sheinnovates.com/
They are doing fabulous work with producing affordable, sustainable menstrual products for women in Rwanda.

Great article! I have honestly wondered why there’s never been a market in “masculine hygiene products” in the same way as advertising and commerce has developed that genre of products for women. (I’m not saying that to sound snarky at all, I’ve really wondered about it). This article provides at least a partial answer to that question.

You know the one thing about reusable menstrual products, though? The lives of average women are not suitable. I’ve been using a Diva cup for years, and for most of those years, was fortunate enough to work in a building with a quiet, secluded, rarely used handicapped washroom featuring a sink. Diva cup? No problem.

Last year, though, I got transferred to another building, with nothing but standard, cramped, high-traffic stalls. I’m still managing with the cup, but it’s tough. I can’t rinse it, for one thing – just empty and wipe, which has led to odour problems – and then how do you dress and discreetly exit when there’s a thin film of blood on at least a couple of fingers? I can’t even imagine what I’d do with reusable pads. Smuggle them out of the bathroom under my shirt in a Ziplock bag?

This is a very important part of the marketing of women’s hygiene products – and their increased sophistication. Reusable products are all very well – but most schools, most workplaces, most public arenas for women – are not friendly for them. Instead, we get Increased Absorbency! and special gel technologies, with the dangers and chemicals those imply, because most women in the western world need – literally need – those things in order to function.

Most people I know find reusables far more convenient in public – can be worn for 12 hours and don’t leak like tampons/pads so less likely to deal with menstruation, no carrying spares or sneaking them into bathroom, no disposal or carrying used products with you until finding a bin, no noisy wrappers, and with cloth pads you’d carry them however you’d carry disposable pads. If blood gets on your fingers when using a cup you do as you would if that happened using tampons, wipe your hands or use either bottled water or wipes to clean-up, and cups don’t harbour bacteria plus are internal so shouldn’t cause any odour problems.

As someone with excessively heavy flow, who has worked as the only woman in a workplace without basic toilet access (toilet without toilet paper, sanitary disposal, hot water, soap, or even a door), who regularly camps etc. cups are significantly easier to deal with than disposables – whereas with disposables I literally couldn’t leave the house. Everyone is different, with different needs, but I disagree with the implication that disposables are easier.